Opals
“The saddest opal saga is the oft-repeated misconception in the last of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, Anne of Geierstein (1829), which seems irrevocably to have linked opal and misfortune. Not having read the third volume, the public jumped to the conclusion that the heroine has been bewitched, that her magic opal discolors when touched by holy water, and that she dies as a result… The opal, which belonged to Anne’s exotic grandmother, loses its color through no malevolence. Quite the contrary, as Anner explains to her suitor, “... it is said to be the nature of that noble gem [to pale as a warning to its owner] on the approach of poison,” the cause of her grandmother’s death,”
-Opals by Fred Ward